Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Via Brayton, I come across this awesome piece over at OneNewsNow, the "news" site of the fundamentalist hate group American "Family" Association. You know, the same people who had that hilarious editorial gaffe recently involving an Olympic track star.

Wildmon has his knickers in a twist over the upcoming Proposition 8 vote this November in California, in which the haters hope to make gay marriage illegal until, presumably, the end of time. If the Christians lose, Wildmon warns, well, down that slippery slope we fall!

"If the homosexuals are able to defeat the marriage amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman, then the culture war is over and we've lost  and gradually, secularism will replace Christianity as the foundation of our society," he adds.

The vote in California, Wildmon explains, will affect the entire nation. "California is a big dam, holding back the flood  and if you take down the dam in California, it's going to flood 49 other states," he illustrates. "It will destroy marriage as it has been known for thousands of years, and with that the cultural decline that normally would follow."

You know, the homophobes constantly rail about how recognizing gay marriage will somehow destroy their own, sanctified straight marriages, but they never explain how. That they take this approach to the argument seems to say voluminous volumes about the insecurity they feel about their own personal situations in marriage. If any situation, including someone else's marriage, could possibly threaten your own marriage, then your marriage is already a failure, and it's everything to do with you, gang. How a bunch of folks absolutely none of these terrified, insecure Christians will ever meet personally could threaten them, simply by deciding to commit to one another in marriage while happening to be the same gender, is simply absurd to contemplate. Unless you contemplate it in the context of fundie fear, not reality.

As for secularism replacing Christianity in America, well, three cheers for that and it's about time! Naturally, the Wildmons of the world will see nothing but the downfall of civilization in such an occurrence. But again, reality paintsa different picture. Sure, a nation in which people enjoy happiness based on concepts like personal freedoms rather than the phantom "happiness" of religion's pie in the sky promises, which merely mask a host of debilitating fears and neuroses, would certainly be hell on Earth to the AFA and their sheep. Read the comments attached to the OneNewsNow article to shake your head over the whirlpool of insecurities and phobias these poor people flounder in.

Ahoy, Californians! Get out there and give Prop. 8 a sound defeat this fall. Because I really really want to read Wildmon's editorial the following day!

Addendum: Well, clearly it's true that traditional marriage is always a paradise of connubial bliss where nothing ever goes wring and which never leads to a cultural decline of any kind. Or maybe, where the husband in this case is concerned, teh gayz made him do it after all...

Heh, the "comments" section. Am I right in guessing that it is heavily "moderated" to keep out "hateful" speech like, oh, anything that doesn't parrot the website? I'm almost glad I'm in Texas where the sea of red is so pervasive it's easy to disappear into the flock-er, crowd. I'm afraid that if I were in California I'd be helping to set up barricades on the streets of Sacramento.

Rogerdr, actually this site is very fair in vetting its comments. I have seen many pro-religion comments on here. I don't know which troll they are walling out but it is probably one of the "you are going to Hell" followed by 20 passages from the bible types.

I only have a few gay friends--but among them, I know of three who are Christians.

Meanwhile, I saw this segment the other night--like maybe 3 weeks ago--on the news. Apparently some guy was promoting that Texas would save money if they made it harder for people to get divorced. He was recommending the legal process for divorce be revised, and the new time-frame for a divorce would be something like 2 years (yeah, that's no problem for a woman in, for example, an abusive arrangement?).

Although it was put forward as a cost-saving initiative, obviously it was not.

If the state was looking at how to save money by revising marriage codes, imagine the cost savings if they did away with marriage entirely. There's no way that the little fee I paid to the state covers the processing that was required. It wasn't an in-and-out procedure at all. We even had them open the courthouse on a holiday so that a judge could come down on a day off to perform the ceremony. We didn't pick the date, and nobody was more suprised than we were to get there and find the courthouse locked up! We thought it was a mistake until the judge arrived. Tell me our couple of dollars covered even THAT much of the state's cost...?

Anyway--yeah, making a process longer and more involved always cuts down on cost, right?

Oh, wait, the idea is that _less_ people will get divorced if it's harder--right?

So, we'll have a state full of unhappy married people, and won't living here be that much more fun? A whole bunch of people stuck with other people they grow to resent and despise even more each day as they feel compelled to stay with someone they want to be away from.

"... if you take down the dam in California, it's going to flood 49 other states."Well, actually, the most it could take down is forty-eight states, since Massachusetts has had legal gay marriage for a few years now. They've even voted to repeal a law banning non-residents from marrying. One News Now is not happy about it, either. How is it fair that they get to be number one in Google News for this story?

If the church had the power to sanctify the marriages of Christians, then they would simply go to a church and get married there and be happy that they had an extra-special marriage. Clearly, Christians don't believe that the church has that power, or they would be happy with their situation.

Ditto for Gawd. If Gawd had the power to sanctify marriages, then Christians would ask Gawd to do that and they would be happy knowing that their marriages were extry-special, having been blessed by Gawd. But clearly Christians don't believe that Gawd has that power or they would be satisfied.

Apparently, what it takes is for Christians to actively deny marriages to gays in order for their marriages to be special. Nothing less will satisfy these people because their church and Gawd clearly lack the power to do that.

Since, by the admission of their own actions, they admit that the Church and Gawd are powerless in their ability to create a proper marriage, clearly churches should be prohibited from conducting such meaningless ceremonies. In stead, Christians who want to get married should give the $1000 or whatever that would go to a church to a single gay person who is supposed to remain that way until the marriage ends. If gays have the magic power, clearly they should be compensated--not the church.

(Find a flaw with that argument!)

More seriously, there are a couple of reasons why churches don't gay people to get married. First, many churches make money selling hatred of gays.

Next, gays are not generally part of the Christian breeding program that makes new believers. They are therefore more useful as a means of scaring the mindless into giving money to the church. You've heard of that evil "homosexual agenda", haven't you?

Third, if same-sex marriages are allowed in a state, then gay church members will want to be married in their church. Either the church will be forced to do it or forced to explain why they take a literal interpretation in some places but not others. Ultimately, the treatment of gays is a giant wedge issue for churches.

I say, strike the wedge and do some cleaving. Let them pay back the gays for all the harm the churches have caused them.

Wildmon is part of the Christian Fascist cabal that has insinuated itself into all the departments of our government from Bush on down. Part of their Machiavellian strategy is to demonize homosexuals because they believe it is safe to do so and it raises money for their coffers. It makes people vote who would otherwise stay home. If they were to ever take complete control of the country during a crisis they would institute biblical law and they would execute homosexuals. They are serious about this and our response must likewise be serious. Please read American Fascist and Kingdom Coming.

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PLEASE NOTE: The Atheist Experience has moved to a new location, and this blog is now closed to comments. To participate in future discussions, please visit http://www.freethoughtblogs.com/axp.The Atheist Experience is a weekly live call-in television show sponsored by the Atheist Community of Austin. This independently-run blog (not sponsored by the ACA) features contributions from current and former hosts and co-hosts of the show.